Network Function Virtualization is a term or a name of a proposed architecture of telecom services as published by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in a series of documents available from the ETSI website. The purpose of NFV is separate the software from the hardware. NFV uses a generic hardware platform and software adapted for the generic hardware platform. Thus, NFV creates a network much more flexible and dynamic than a legacy communication network. In NFV-based networks, a service is based on one or more virtual network functions or features (VNF) that can be executed on any generic hardware processing facility. Therefore, VNFs are installed, removed, and moved between hardware facilities, much more easily, less costly and thus, more frequently.
The NFV-based network is managed by a software program including an NFV orchestration (NFV-O) component. Typically, the NFV-O is responsible for installing, activating, and deactivating VNFs and VNF instances, as well as other functions of the NFV-based network. If two NFV-based networks should be connected, their respective NFV-Os should coordinate their functionality and activities. An NFV-O therefore manages in a typical processing unit a plurality of VNFs of various services provided by different VNF vendors.
Therefore, the NFV-O is typically responsible for optimizing the deployment of VNFs and VNF instances within the NFV-based network and the allocation of network resources to the various VNFs and VNF instances, so that the services rendered by the NFV-based network to its customers meet the requirements such as Service Level Agreement (SLA), Quality of Service (QoS), etc. The NFV-O optimizes the VNF deployment resource allocation repeatedly for maximal utilization of the available infrastructure. This repetitive optimization fragments the network, which then limits the ability of the NFV-O to optimize the VNF deployment resource allocation in run-time. There is thus a need for addressing these and/or other issues associated with the prior art.